SharePoint and AgilePoint Deployment Options

NOTE: Given the rate at which AgilePoint is being adopted as a SharePoint workflow add on platform, we get regular requests about configuration requirements for SharePoint and AgilePoint server farms. This article helps explain configuration options.

AgilePoint is an enterprise ready product which supports various kinds of network topologies, enabling network administrators to configure AgilePoint for their own SharePoint farms. Because AgilePoint is so highly configurable, it is a good choice for organizations who invest heavily in SharePoint. Following are various configurations which AgilePoint supports:

Single SharePoint Farm—Single AgilePoint Farm configuration

The single SharePoint Farm—Single AgilePoint Farm configuration is a simple integration scenario where the web applications in a single SharePoint farm connect to a single AgilePoint cluster. The web applications, which need to be process-enabled, and the underlying site collections connect to the same AgilePoint server farm.

Multiple SharePoint Farms—Single AgilePoint Farm configuration

Some large organizations maintain a separate SharePoint farm for each department within the organization; however all departments may want to use the same AgilePoint server farm, a configuration that is supported by AgilePoint.

Single SharePoint Farm—Multiple AgilePoint Farms Configuration

Some large organizations maintain a single SharePoint farm, but each department within the organization has a separate web application/site collection. Moreover these departments may have their own AgilePoint server farms or might decide to share an AgilePoint server farm. AgilePoint supports this configuration as well, since it allows configuring the AgilePoint-server-connection information at the site-collection level; therefore, each site collection can connect to a separate AgilePoint server if required.

Mixed configuration

Since AgilePoint allows setting up AgilePoint server-connection information at the site-collection level, system administrators can have mixed configurations. For example, for a particular organization, some SharePoint site collections might connect to one AgilePoint farm, while other site collections connect to a different AgilePoint farm. To extend the example, consider an organization that has three departments. Two of these departments might decide to share the same AgilePoint farm, so all their site collections are connected to this AgilePoint farm; whereas the third department decides to maintain a separate AgilePoint farm. Processes which are shared between all departments can be executed on a shared AgilePoint farm, where some of the site collections on all these farms might be connecting to this shared server. This is an example of a highly configurable scenario.

Support for Multiple Instances on same Hardware

AgilePoint’s process engine allows multiple AgilePoint server instances to run on the same physical hardware. This approach enables each division within an organization to get its own, individual AgilePoint instance, which would connect to its own database and backend systems. However, on the SharePoint side, both divisions continue to use a shared SharePoint farm. AgilePoint allows system admin to specify at a per-site-collection level which AgilePoint server that site collection will connect to.

Note: Although most of the images above depict AgilePoint or SharePoint farms, the configurations apply to single-server installations, as well.